


Slide

by Chimerical (PBJellie)



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Beth's pov, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, High School, Introspection, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22329004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PBJellie/pseuds/Chimerical
Summary: Beth and Jerry get a flat on the way to the clinic.
Relationships: Beth Smith/Jerry Smith, Rick Sanchez & Beth Smith (Rick and Morty)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Slide

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short one shot I've had kicking around. It plays out some ideas I really want to develop into larger fics, so feedback is appreciated.

Flat tires were not signs from God. They didn't mean anything, really. No big life lessons could be gleaned from a flat, but leave it to Jerry to try.   
  
"It means something!" Jerry shouted, kicking the rust off his Impala. "It means something Beth! It's a sign."   
  
"You just want it to mean something," she sighed. He was thinking about the cosmos and the heavens, and the only consequence she could see was she'd be out the cost of a cab.   
  
"No," Jerry insisted, pulling down the sleeves of his jean jacket. It had to be a girl's style; it was just something about the wash, or the cut around the waist. It did not help him be the insistent man he wanted to be. "No! People have meaning! Things have meaning!"   
  
Beth pulled back her blonde hair, then twisted her legs out the door and digging her Keds into the gravel. Occasionally a car would whiz by, and Jerry would jump, like that'd get someone to stop who was already doing 70 in a 40. She'd at least had the foresight to wear sensible shoes. There was no need to be teetering out of the clinic in platforms.   
  
"You haven't said anything because you know I'm right," Jerry smirked.  
  
She'd once seen a plaque, when she was antiquing with her mom on a rare trip out of her facility, that read, "never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience." It stuck even though it was obviously not an antique, and her mother hadn't laughed.   
  
Her mother didn't laugh at anything. Not anymore.   
  
"We could just call it off," Jerry insisted. "We could walk to a payphone, call a tow truck, then get lunch while the shop fixes the car. It could be nice."   
  
"I don't know," Beth remarked, on autopilot. Jerry was easy to be around, at least in short doses. It was easy to just nod along, remark on the banalities of life, then go home to her room. She could disregard the eerie glow from the garage as he tried his best to be deep over the phone. It helped her unwind, and unwinding helped her tolerate life's actual problems.  
  
  
"Don't do anything that you regret," Jerry drummed his fingers on his jeans, "that we both regret."   
  
They could, she guessed. They could regret not doing it, just as logically. It was an hard argument to dismantle, because really, she could regret anything if she tried hard enough; pizza was good unless you got heartburn, parties were fun unless you failed a pop quiz the next day, and sex with an idiot was fun unless you got pregnant.   
  
What was the logic line for abortions? She'd never experienced one before, so how could she know?  
  
She certainly couldn't ask her father. She couldn't wait for her father to be bothered to come into the house and speak to her. Even then, he wouldn't be sober. They passed at night on occasion, when she'd sneak across the kitchen to grab a snack. He never said anything, but they'd make eye contact before he walked away.   
  
How long had it been since they talked?  
  
"We could just reschedule!" Jerry waved his arm in her line of sight, making her jump. "We could do it next week. Just think on it for another week. No harm in that, right?"   
  
"Maybe," she shrugged. Postponing indefinitely was it's own kind of choice with it's own repercussions. "I could just get a cab. It's fine. You didn't have to drive me."   
  
"I did. It's the least I can do. Anything less and I become your girlfriend, right?" He laughed as Beth let her head fall forward, overcome with a wave of nausea. The least he could have done was not buy an XL condom when, judging from what she'd seen in her father's magazines, he was moderately endowed at best.  
"Get it? Because it wouldn't be very manly for me to make my pregnant girlfriend go get an abortion alone. I'd have to be your girlfriend, then. It was a good joke." 

"Uh-huh," Beth responded in a haze. It was too hot to be sitting in a stalled car, even with her door open. Her watch said that she'd already missed the appointment, but maybe if she hurried they could work something out.   
  
"Let me get you a cab home," Jerry grumbled, kicking the car again, shaking it just enough to make Beth vomit on her pristine white shoes. "Tiddlywinks!"   
  
Who even was he? Tiddlywinks? She was pregnant, on her way to get an abortion he obviously didn't want her to get, and after an hour in the sun, he's shouting tiddlywinks while she puked. Hysterical laughing morphed into crying, then just noise. She was in his front seat with a puddle of Big Red seeping into the side of the road, because her boyfriend, who impregnated her, couldn't even change his own tire.   
  
Tiddlywinks, indeed.   
  
"I'm going to see if I can find a payphone, just sit tight." Jerry backed away like she was a cobra coiled at his feet, hissing and spitting a warning.   
  
Bet he wished she was at the clinic right now. She bet that by the time he'd be back in her sight, he'd be ready to call it quits all together. She thought she was going to get the courtesy of being the dumper, but really she was always going to be the dumpee. He could tell that this was not a train he wanted to be on, and really, who could blame him?   
  
Shouting in an disabled vehicle while covered in vomit was not a good look. He was really dodging a bullet with this abortion. Any lasting ties to her would be a detriment. She'd probably be this moody and unstable forever, she laughed. This would just be her new life. She'd either grow up into her mother or her father, and that'd be his lot for the rest of time.   
  
Sweet simple Jerry couldn't handle either of them.   
  
No one could.  
  
They were both remarkably alone. Her father by choice and her mother by necessity.   
  
She was the only one to ever really interact with either of them, at least in any meaningful way. She was sure her mother's nurses had shallow relationships; she'd even seen a few up close. They remembered what television show she liked in her private room while she stared in the opposite direction.   
  
Beth needed more than that. She needed more than another human to cut up her food when her medication affected her fine motor skills.   
  
She also needed more than a tacit relationship with whatever teenager was working at the gas station closest to her house. Sure, people didn't have purposes, but hers couldn't be to drink four forty's a night, then fall asleep in the garage.   
  
What if she was killing the only human that would spend time with her? What if that was this baby's whole purpose?   
  
What if Jerry was the only man stupid enough to shack up with her? She was a time bomb. No one wanted a psycho mother-in-law, and her father wasn't much better. Jerry had seen a picture of what was to come, and he still wanted the baby carried to term. He was an idiot, but maybe he was her idiot.  
  
Maybe she was just confusing stupidity for loyalty. Neither were qualities she saw up close, so how could she tell? Maybe Jerry wasn't traditionally stupid, just supportive.   
  
The robots her father made seemed stupid, like an iron that could only iron ties, but they did one job perfectly. She'd caught her father talking to it, bemoaning his life choices of how his marriage was in shambles, then screaming about how all he needed was unity. Long rambling talks about how if he could find a new woman then he could have unity, he could sell her on the concept.   
  
Beth hadn't understood, but if Jerry was the mechanical tie press of humans, maybe when she started to go off on her own tangents, he'd be there, nodding reassuringly. Maybe Jerry would understand, when the time came.   
  
Her father always said that his creations understood, they understood what was wrong with him. She could make Jerry hers. Teach him chess, like her father taught her, get into college together, and mold him into the perfect mate.   
  
Jerry could be her insurance plan from drinking in the dark with robots.   
  
That was not what she wanted. Taking a gap year to have a baby was better than drinking alone.   
  
"Fiddlefaddle!" Jerry shouted, panting as he raced down shoulder. "I forgot which way! Are we on FM 54 or 75? I told the tow truck we were on 75, that's what road this is, right?"  
  
Mechanical tie presses can't give directions, Beth thought as she nodded. They aren't capable.   
  
Jerry smiled, kneeling in the gravel as he tried to catch his breath. He paid no mind to the vomit as his khakis dug into the rocks.  
  
"Do you need to sit?" Beth asked, narrowing her eyes as she started to forced herself out of the seat.  
  
"No!" Jerry fumbled, touching his feet, then doing something with his shoelaces. He knotted and unknotted them as he worried to himself. He ran a single finger along the inside of each shoe, before putting something, probably gravel, in the palm of his hand. "You sit, or, I, Beth, you can stand I guess, if you want. I guess people are usually standing when this happens."   
  
"When their car gets a flat on the way to an abortion?" Beth squirmed a bit, feeling her stomach swim. Something was off. Jerry was a goofball, but he didn't stutter quite this often. He never was this moist, even in the summer heat.   
  
"Marry me?" He shuddered, holding out a cheap ring.   
  
"What?" Beth laughed, examining the palm of his hand. He'd brought a ring with for this drive? Jerry smiled, grimaced, then winced as a passing semi rocked the car. "You're serious."   
  
"Marry me."   
  
Beth inhaled, turning to look at the road. She could have a new life. She could choose her destiny. Take the gap year and have a baby, or go to college, alone. Have a husband, settle down and risk that in ten years she could claim to not know her family, her brain fabricating some story that she was possessed by a demon, or be drunk alone for the rest of her life.

Ten good years seemed better than nothing.  
  
"Okay."


End file.
